Academic dishonesty: understanding how undergraduate students think and act

The purpose of this investigation is to explore and understand the justifications given by students to the existence of dishonest behavior and understanding the extent to which the justifications given might influence denouncing and cheating behavior. 1277 undergraduate students of two Portuguese Public Universities were surveyed about their own cheating behavior, their propensity to denounce and the ―neutralizing attitudes‖. As predicted, ―neutralizing attitudes‖ was negatively correlated with self cheating behavior and positively correlated with reporting. The likelihood of copying is greater when the purpose is ―helping a friend‖, ―when the courses are more difficult‖, ―to get higher marks/grades‖, and because ―peers accept and tend to see copying practices as normal‖. Results support the notion that context emerges as a very important influence in the decision to cheating. The environment-peer pressure and the normalized attitudes towards academic dishonesty are the main influences on the propensity to cheating.

Challenges for e-learning and adult students in higher education

This article examines Lifelong Learning, from the perspective of the adult learner in higher education, by presenting some of the results of a project, funded by the European Commission's Socrates Programme, LIHE, Learning in Higher Education. It is structured as follows: first, the background of the project is described, then the experiences of the adult student, concerning their induction and tuition, are presented. Some future trends concerning adults in higher education and lifelong learning are outlined and conclusions drawn.

Educational characteristics of adult students in portuguese technological schools

Despite a massive expansion of education in Portugal, since the 1970’s, educational attainment of the adult population in the country remains low. The numbers of working-age people in some form of continuing education are among the lowest, according to the OECD and EU-27 statistics. Technological Schools(TS), initially created in the 1990’s, under the umbrella of the Ministry of Economy in partnership with industry and industrial associations, aimed to prepare qualified staff for industries and services in the country, particularly in the engineering sector, through the provision of post secondary non-university programmes of studies, the CET (Technological Specialization Courses). Successful CET students are awarded a DET(Diploma of Technological Specialization), which corresponds to Vocational Qualification level IV of the EU, according to the latest alteration (2005) of the Education Systems Act (introduced in 1986). In this, CET’s are also clearly defined as one of the routes for access to Higher Education (HE), in Portugal. The PRILHE (Promoting Reflective and Independent Learning in Higher Education) multinational project, funded by the European Socrates Grundtvig Programme, aimed to identify the learning processes which enable adult students in higher education to become autonomous reflective learners and search best practices to support these learning processes. During this research, both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to determine how students organise their studies and develop their learning skills. The Portuguese partner in the project’ consortium used a two case studies approach, one with students of Higher Education Institutions and other with students of TS. This paper only applies to students of TS, as these have a predominant bias towards engineering. Results show that student motivation and professional teaching support contribute equally to the development of an autonomous and reflective approach to learning in adult students; this is essential for success in a knowledge economy, where lifelong learning is the key to continuous employment.

Building a knowledge and learning society in Portugal: adult students in technological schools and higher education institutions

Lifelong learning (LLL) has received increasing attention in recent years. It implies that learning should take place at all stages of the “life cycle and it should be life-wide, that is embedded in all life contexts from the school to the work place, the home and the community” (Green, 2002, p.613). The ‘learning society’, is the vision of a society where there are recognized opportunities for learning for every person, wherever they are and however old they happen to be. Globalization and the rise of new information technologies are some of the driving forces that cause depreciation of specialised competences. This happens very quickly in terms of economic value; consequently, workers of all skills levels, during their working life, must have the opportunity to update “their technical skills and enhance general skills to keep pace with continuous technological change and new job requirements” (Fahr, 2005, p. 75). It is in this context that LLL tops the policy agenda of international bodies, national governments and non-governmental organizations, in the field of education and training, to justify the need for LLL opportunities for the population as they face contemporary employability challenges. It is in this context that the requirement and interest to analyse the behaviour patterns of adult learners has developed over the last few years

Lifelong learning: case study of adult students in portuguese technological schools and higher education institutions

Paper to be presented in ESREA 2007 ADC Network Seminar - Changing Relationships between the State, Civil Society and the Citizen: Implications for adult education and adult learning, 14 -16 June 2007 - University of Minho - Campus de Gualtar, Braga (Portugal).

Learning in higher education: strategies to overcome challenges faced by adult students - lessons drawn from two studies in portugal

Int’l J. of Information and Communication Technology Education, 3(2), 1-14, April-June 2007

How can we help students to improve their creativity? – lessons learned from a case study

One of the main concerns of today’s organizations is to cope with the rapid pace of change while maintaining their competitive advantage. This means that firms must be innovative, create new knowledge and have new ideas constantly. Similarly, one of the main concerns of lecturers is to help students to develop creativity. According to some authors, new ideas, new thoughts, innovation can arise in an appropriate environment and with the development and train of adequate competences and skills. This means that although some persons were born more creative than others, it is possible to help those less creative to improve their innovative capacities and competences. The question that remains now is “how”. How can we, as lecturers and educators help our students to become more creative? In this paper we describe a Portuguese case study that took place at ISCAP (School of Accountancy and Administration of Porto – Portugal), in the course of Business Communication, in the unit “Marketing Communication” (3rd year (1st Bologna cycle), 1st semester). We will describe and characterize the situation at the beginning of the semester (situation A), explain the tasks and activities proposed to students and the final result (situation A2). We will discuss differences between situation A and A2, formulate some hypotheses concerning differences and draw some recommendations.

Teaching and learning mathematics using moodle

This paper summarizes a project that is contributing to a change in the way of teaching and learning Mathematics. Mathematics is a subject of the Accounting and Administration course. In this subject we teach: Functions and Algebra. The aim is that the student understand the basic concepts and is able to apply them in other issues, when possible, establishing a bridge between the issues that they have studied and their application in Accounting. As from this year, the Accounting course falls under in Bologna Process. The teacher and the student roles have changed. The time for theoretical and practical classes has been reduced, so it was necessary to modify the way of teaching and learning. In the theoretical classes we use systems of multimedia projection to present the concepts, and in the practical classes we solve exercises. We also use the Excel and the mathematical open source software wxMaxima. To supplement our theoretical and practical classes we have developed a project called MatActiva based on the Moodle platform offered by PAOL - Projecto de Apoio Online (Online Support Project). With the creation of this new project we wanted to take advantage already obtained results with the previous experiences, giving to the students opportunities to complement their study in Mathematics. One of the great objectives is to motivate students, encourage them to overcome theirs difficulties through an auto-study giving them more confidence. In the MatActiva project the students have a big collection of information about the way of the subject works, which includes the objectives, the program, recommended bibliography, evaluation method and summaries. It works as material support for the practical and theoretical classes, the slides of the theoretical classes are available, the sheets with exercises for the students to do in the classroom and complementary exercises, as well as the exams of previous years. Students can also do diagnostic tests and evaluation tests online. Our approach is a reflexive one, based on the professional experience of the teachers that explore and incorporate new tools of Moodle with their students and coordinate the project MatActiva.

How to teach mathematics with MOODLE

The aim of this article is to present a Project in the Oporto’s Institute of Accounting and Administration, which pretends to contribute for a change in the way of teaching and learning Mathematics. One of the main objectives of this project is to innovate the teaching and learning processes, exploring technologies as a pedagogical resource and to induce higher motivation to students, improve the rate of success and make available to students a set of materials adapted to their needs. This concern is justified due to the fact that students have a weak preparation, without consolidated basis. Since the year 2007/2008 the courses were adjusted to the Bologna process, which requires several changes in teacher’s and student’s roles, methodologies and assessment. The number of weekly classes has been reduced, so it was necessary to develop new strategies and methodologies to support the student. With the implementation of the Bologna Process in the Accounting degree, we felt a great need to provide other types of activities to students. To complement our theoretical and practical classes we have developed a project called MatActiva based on the Moodle platform offered by PAOL - Projecto de Apoio On-Line (Online Support Project). Moodle allows us to use the language TEX to create materials that use mathematical symbols. Using this functionality, we created a set of easy to use interactive resources. In MatActiva project, the students have access to a variety of different materials. We have followed a strategy that makes the project compatible with the theoretical and practical subjects/classes, complementing them. To do so, we created some resources, for instance multiple-choice tests, which are the most accessed by the students. These tests can be realized and corrected on-line and for each wrong answer there is a feedback with the resolution. We can find other types of resources: diagnostic tests, theoretical notes. There are not only the pre-requirements for subjects mathematics, but also materials to help students follow up the programs. We also developed several lessons. This activity consists of a number of pages, where each page has contents and leads to other pages, based on the student's progress. The teacher creates the choices and determines the next page that the student will see, based upon their knowledge. There is also an area of doubts, where the students can place all the mathematical doubts they have, and a teacher gives the answers or clues to help them in their work. MatActiva also offers an area where we can find some humour, curiosities, contests and games including mathematical contents to test the math skills, as well as links to pages about mathematical contents that could be useful for the study. Since ISCAP receives ERASMUS students and some of them attend mathematics, we developed some materials in English, so they can also use MatActiva. The main objectives of our project are not only to bring success in the subjects of mathematics, but also to motivate the students, encourage them to overcome theirs difficulties through an auto-study giving them more confidence and improve their relationship with the mathematics as well as the communication between students and teachers and among students.

The active mathematics project at ISCAP

This paper summarizes a project that is contributing to a change in the way of teaching and learning Mathematics. Mathematics is a subject of the Accounting and Administration course. In this subject we teach: Functions and Algebra. The aim is that the students understand the basic concepts and is able to apply them in other issues, when possible, establishing a bridge between the issues that they have studied and their application in Accounting. As from this year, the Accounting course falls under in Bologna Process. The teacher and the student roles have changed. The time for theoretical and practical classes has been reduced, so it was necessary to modify the way of teaching and learning. In the theoretical classes we use systems of multimedia projection to present the concepts, and in the practical classes we solve exercises. To supplement our theoretical and practical classes we have developed an active mathematics project called MatActiva based on the Moodle platform offered by PAOL - Projecto de Apoio Online (Online Support Project). In the last versions of Moodle, it is possible use the TeX language to create math questions. Using this tool we created a set of interactive materials. With the creation of this new project we wanted to take advantage already obtained results with the previous experiences, giving to the students opportunities to complement their study in Mathematics. One of the great objectives is to motivate students, encourage them to overcome theirs difficulties through an auto-study, giving them more confidence and the opportunity to seeing others perspectives of the mathematics subjects. In the MatActiva project the students have a big collection of information about the way of the subject works, which includes the objectives, the program, recommended bibliography, evaluation method and summaries. It works as material support for the practical and theoretical classes, the slides of the theoretical classes are available, the sheets with exercises for the students to do in the classroom and complementary exercises, as well as the exams of previous years. Students can also do diagnostic tests and evaluation tests online. Our approach is a reflexive one, based on the professional experience of the teachers that explore and incorporate new tools of Moodle with their students and coordinate the project MatActiva.

Improving management skills through business simulation

A survey was conducted among students of the Accounting and Administration undergraduate degree at ISCAP – IPP (School of Accounting and Administration of Polytechnic Institute of Porto) in order to understand their perception value of their course Business Simulation (BS). This course is provided in a business environment where students can learn by doing through the management of a company as they were in the real life, but risk-free. The learning tasks are provided in an action-oriented format to maximize the learning process. Students learn by doing a set of tasks every session and have also to produce reports and presentations during the course. BS is part of the undergraduate degree of Accounting and Administration at ISCAP – IPP since the beginning of 2003. The questionnaire we used captured the students’ perception about general and specific skills and competencies considered important for managers and accountants in the real life, about the methodology used in the course, which is totally different from the traditional form, and also about the adequacy of the course included as part of the undergraduate degree. The results showed that students’ perception is highly positive and almost all of them think they improve the skills needed for a job during the course. These results are consistent with [1] Adler and Milne’s research in which the authors found that students agree with the use of action-oriented learning tasks in order to provide them the needed attitudes, skills, and knowledge. The improvement of group skills is the most important issue for students, which can be understandable as BS is the only course from the degree in Accounting and Administration they really have to work in groups.

Occupational accidents among middle and high school students of the state of São Paulo, Brazil

OBJECTIVES: To estimate the prevalence of occupational injuries and identify their risk factors among students in two municipalities. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in public schools of the municipalities of Santo Antonio do Pinhal and Monteiro Lobato, Brazil. A stratified probabilistic sample was drawn from public middle and high schools of the study municipalities. A total of 781 students aged 11 to 19 years participated in the study. Students attending middle and high school answered a comprehensive questionnaire on living and working conditions, as well as aspects of work injuries, and health conditions. Multiple logistic regression models were fitted to estimate risk factors of previous and present occupational injuries. RESULTS: Of 781 students, 604 previously had or currently have jobs and 47% reported previous injuries. Among current workers (n=555), 38% reported injuries on their current job. Risk factors for work injuries with statistically significant odds ratio >2.0 included attending evening school, working as a housekeeper, waiter or brickmaker, and with potentially dangerous machines. CONCLUSIONS: The study results reinforce the need of restricting adolescent work and support communities to implement social promotion programs.

An intelligent tutoring approach to support students and technicians in electrical installation design

Designing electric installation projects, demands not only academic knowledge, but also other types of knowledge not easily acquired through traditional instructional methodologies. A lot of additional empirical knowledge is missing and so the academic instruction must be completed with different kinds of knowledge, such as real-life practical examples and simulations. On the other hand, the practical knowledge detained by the most experienced designers is not formalized in such a way that is easily transmitted. In order to overcome these difficulties present in the engineers formation, we are developing an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), for training and support concerning the development of electrical installation projects to be used by electrical engineers, technicians and students.

Feedback regarding students initial pharmaceutical internship from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca

Introduction/Aims: The purpose of the study is to evaluate the perception of the organization, the development and the evaluation of the initial stage in the internship of students, in order to improve these activities and to establish the adequate objectives in accordance with the changes concerning the concept of modern pharmacy. Materials and methods: An online survey was made using Google Docs ® -Create Form extension. All results were accumulated and computed using Microsoft Excel ®. The questionnaire consisted of 11 questions, structured on several levels: the objectives and how they can be achieved, internship organization, the internship training (effective participation in specific activities and integration in the pharmaceutical activity), the assessment, the profile of tutor / pharmacy. The questionnaire was completed by students from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Medicine and Pharmacy "Iuliu Haţieganu" Cluj Napoca, Romania. Results and discussions. The study was conducted on 308 students (60% of all students from the study years II-IV. 90% of the respondents had actually participated in the internship, whilst 10% only formally participated in this activity. The main responsibilities of the students were: storage and reception of pharmaceutical products (94%, respectively 79%) and working with the receipts (57%). Most of the students appreciate that they were integrated into the work in the pharmacy, this being due largely pharmacist tutor, who expressed interest and ability in mentoring activities. They appreciated that the role of tutor requires 3-5 years of professional experience. In terms of the internship objectives, these should aim at applying the knowledge gained until the graduation year, but also familiarization with activities which might turn into applications for the coming years. 43% of students believe that only 25% of the theoretical knowledge was useful during the internship. 90 % of the total questioned considered useful to develop a practice guideline adapted to the year of study. Conclusions. The professional training of the future pharmacist’s students depends largely on experience gained by students during the internship activity. Feed-back from the students’ shows that they are aware of the usefulness of the internship, but believe the objectives must be updated and a better correlation between work in pharmacy and theoretical knowledge has to be made. A first step is to develop a practical guide adapted to each year of study. The involvement of the tutor pharmacist is also essential to the success of this activity